Welcome to the Digital Marketing Inner Circle

I am a keen proponent of using Social Media Marketing (SMM) in digital campaigns as part of a multi-channel approach. However, I am often surprised by some of the comments from clients suggesting they see this channel a niche or the edgy side of digital marketing. I know that the Internet is littered with firms and individuals touting themselves as social media 'experts' and just like the "snake-oil salesmen" of the old wild West, we will see this segment go through a period of rapid growth as many jump on the social media bandwagon.

Below, you can see the spending trends emerging in SMM and clearly we are seeing the first phase of a rapid period of growth. Although these are numbers of based on US research, I have no doubt we will see this reflected in China and in Asia more broader.

In what is not going to be a surprise for most of us in the Marketing space is the announcement by WPP Group that their  like-for-like revenue was down 8.1% for 2009. In branding and identity, healthcare and specialty communications group, which includes its direct, digital and interactive agencies, they announced revenue declines of 6.2% for 2009 compared to the year before. 

Baidu.com changed their policies on its Baidu Alliance Program this week and the result will be a reduction in the number of publishers being able to leverage the Baidu ad content. The reports on the local media suggest the members affected are mainly non-contracted website navigation sites and the traffic involved is about one million daily visitors.

So where many sites failed to gain direct advertising dollars they simply turned to the readily available CPC text ads (either Google's AdSence or Baidu's Content Ads)... but after years of complaints from advertisers about the quality of the ad network publishers, or issues around the click behavior Search Engines are having to respond by refining their partner programs. So does this mean the death of smaller, more niche publishers? Maybe, maybe not.... largely, it will depend on their ability to find alternative revenues and I suggest this could be the start of an affiliate marketing Renaissance in China.

Ambush marketing can be defined as a tactic whereby a company attempts to ambush or undermine the sponsorship activities of a rival that owns the legal rights to sponsor an event; often involves creating the sense that they, and not the actual sponsor, are associated with the owners of the event or activity.

Sounds kind of sneaky and underhand... but that seems to appeal to a lot of Marketers and I for one look for opportunities to exploit this notion online... although more difficult to do, this strategy still offers many of the same advantages to it's offline equivalent.